There has been a noticeable pattern in transitions of administrations during the past three decades that voters seem to forget.  Republican George W. Bush inherited a balanced budget and low unemployment from Democrat Bill Clinton in 2001.  He promptly cut taxes and then started two wars.  After eight years of his administration, Democrat Barack Obama inherited the Great Recession, with soaring deficits and horrific unemployment.  After eight years of the Obama administration, Republican Donald Trump inherited a growing economy and shrinking unemployment.

He promptly cut taxes too, of course, and generally enjoyed the continuing economic and unemployment trends until he badly handled the covid pandemic in early 2020 that reversed both.  The Trump administration gets credit for supercharging vaccine development.  But numerous Republican politicians and right-wing media, like Fox News, railed against the shots and mask mandates, while promoting bogus, ineffective, cures like hydroxychloroquine.  During a press conference, Trump even seriously suggested that people ingest bleach to kill the virus. 

It was President Joe Biden who was left with the task of getting the maximum number of shots in arms and taming the covid beast that was devouring our population and suppressing the economy.  Plus, he had to find ways to get over 6% of unemployed back to work, while trying to heal the wounds of a nation further divided by Trump’s lies about election fraud that fueled the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  And he has done a damn good job of it.

Unfortunately, millions of Americans don’t seem to understand how good they have it this year.  So, here is some of what I hope voters will learn about the Biden/Harris record before voting in November, most of which came from a Washington Post article. 

The U.S. economy now has 6 million more jobs than it had pre-pandemic.  Economic growth under Biden has made the U.S. economy the envy of the world for its robust post-pandemic surge.  And the recession that most economists were confidently predicting for 2024 hasn’t happened.

From 1970 through 2020, the U.S. economy experienced only 25 total months with an unemployment rate below 4%.  Biden oversaw 27 consecutive months at or below that low rate.  And Black unemployment reached an all-time low of 4.8% in April 2023.

Since the start of the Reagan administration in1981, the federal government had not made significant long-term investments in America ‘s future.  Biden changed that using federal dollars to invest in infrastructure, children, manufacturing, energy and technology.

Thanks in large part to Biden’s Chips and Science Act and his Inflation Reduction Act, factory construction has surged, boosting manufacturing jobs to the highest level since the Great Recession.  And business creation in the U.S. has reached its highest levels in decades, with 19 million new business applications since Jan. 2021, a huge increase from pre-pandemic. 

The number of Americans with health insurance reached an all-time high of 304 million people in 2022, roughly 92% of the population.  And Biden’s legislation capped the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare at $35 and enabled Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices.

With skillful diplomacy, Biden strengthened America’s alliance system and rallied the West to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion.  And NATO added two strong new members in Sweden and Finland.  In the Indo-Pacific region, he organized a bulwark against China with cooperation from Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and others.  Surveys suggest that the U.S. and Biden are viewed much more favorably by most countries due to these efforts.

Republicans have continuously attacked Biden for allowing thousands of undocumented immigrants to enter through the southern border.  Yet, after Biden backed the strongest border legislation ever passed by the Senate, Trump had his supporters in the House kill it.

While it is true that Biden’s landmark legislation increased the federal debt, he still added a lot less than Trump.  Both administrations enacted huge emergency spending that the pandemic required, but Trump approved $4.8 trillion in non-covid debt, while Biden accounted for $2.2 trillion.  Trump’s contribution came mainly from his 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, which added more red ink than Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which invested in America’s future.

A leader gets pummeled for negative things that occur during their term, like inflation and the price of oil, even if they had very little control over them.  But rarely do they get credit for what didn’t happen on their watch.  So, Biden got blamed for higher prices, even though wages were also up significantly.  But he has gotten almost no credit for helping prevent a recession, which would have surged unemployment and made millions of Americans a lot poorer.

As he closes out his political career, Biden’s legacy will be that he restored the presidency to a position of dignity and sanity that is recognized around the world and that he made the painful decision to withdraw his candidacy for a second term to help ensure that the dangerous, anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior that preceded him doesn’t succeed him in 2025. 

Vice President Kamala Harris deserves credit for being President Biden’s active partner in restoring America’s stature in the world and making the U.S. economy the unquestioned post-pandemic leader.  Now, it is up to all democracy-loving Americans to strongly support her so that Trump doesn’t inherit the excellent results from the Biden administration that Republicans will quickly find a way to screw up.